The Cinematheque

“An all-out assault on the senses … Fellini shows himself again as an artist in full and splendid maturity.”

John Russell Taylor, Sight & Sound

“Rome. Before Christ. After Fellini.” Fellini’s legendary flamboyance hits its zenith in the spectacular, sensory-overload Satyricon, ​“the most glorious bacchanal in the history of cinema” (Time). A sprawling, salacious adaptation of Petronius, the film follows two pansexual young men through the phantasmagoric depravity and debauchery that is Fellini’s fantasy of life under Nero. With its sumptuous costumes and decor, stunning set pieces, and parade of archetypal Fellini grotesques, Satyricon is a true wonder to behold. And a forum for ongoing debate: Is this Fellini at his immoderate worst or imaginative best? The director himself called Satyricon ​“a science fiction film projected into the past, not the future.” Some compared it to Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey, which appeared around the same time, as a mind-blowing, consciousness-expanding harbinger of a new non-linear cinema. The film is so damned stylish that Dolce & Gabbana funded its restoration!

“A masterpiece. Some will say it is a bloody, depraved, disgusting film … But Satyricon is a masterpiece all the same, and films that dare everything cannot please everybody.”

Roger Ebert, Chicago Sun-Times